


Exit Wounds

by Alliterative_Albatross



Category: Narcos (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Gun Violence, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Pre-Slash If You Squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:29:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28574556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alliterative_Albatross/pseuds/Alliterative_Albatross
Summary: Steve Murphy has several realizations, all at once.
Relationships: Javier Peña & Steve Murphy, Steve Murphy/Javier Peña
Comments: 21
Kudos: 66





	Exit Wounds

“Stay back,” Steve mouths, lifting a hand to Javier’s chest. Behind him, Steve can damn near feel Javi rolling his eyes, but he keeps still, both of them hardly daring to breathe as they pause at the corner of the stairwell. 

Feo is waiting for them. Steve just knows it.

Dread and anticipation are rising in him, age old instinct and adrenaline converging into a single minded awareness that sharpens every sense. Steve’s heartbeat thrums in his ears. Reality glitters around him. Javi huffs softly at his shoulder, eager, impatient. 

It’s like having a superpower. 

Carefully, Steve edges his gaze just around the corner, leaps back as a single round grazes just past his left ear. He feels the zing of displaced air before he’s even aware of the crack of gunfire. 

“Shit,” he hisses. 

That had been close. 

“Think you found him,” Javi supplies helpfully. 

Above them, there’s a scuffle, receding footsteps. Javi doesn’t wait - he’s already tearing around the corner, glock extended, giving chase.

Steve leaps at his heels.

He’ll never admit it, not to anybody and especially not to Connie because she worries, but this is Steve’s favorite part of the job. There’s something primal and evocative about chasing a bad guy through the streets of Medellín. It calls back to that little boy in Memphis, playing cops and robbers with the neighborhood kids until long past the streetlamps had lit. It awakens that visceral sense of masculine justice that’s simmered just beneath the surface of Steve’s thoughts since he could remember; the burning need to protect, to avenge, to do the right thing.

And fuck, it’s just fun.

He grits his teeth and digs in, running for all he’s worth. Chases in Medellín are all sticky heat and creaking rooftops that pop beneath a grown man’s weight, the smell of spices and gunpowder and unwashed bodies. The air is thick like soup. It stagnates in his lungs, stifles his breaths. His heart pounds wildly. Sweat pours down his back and clings to his shirt, and Steve basks in it all, loving every second. 

Javi ducks into one of the _zócalos,_ taking a short cut on a hunch. Steve follows. The world narrows, the entire cramped room smelling of tortillas and goat milk. The darkness inside is a stark contrast to the midday Medellín sun, and Steve barrels into the tiny kitchen table before his eyes can fully adjust. A child shrieks, and Javi pauses just long enough to wince toward her mother as Steve staggers to his feet. 

“Sorry,” he bleats, already stumbling out the door.

Outside, they are faced with a choice. Stairs going up to the rooftops. Stairs going down into the alleyway. Absolute silence. 

Steve takes the street and Javi takes the high ground. There’s no discussion, no pause to consider, no flicker of eye contact and a question. Steve and Javi move as one unit in two bodies, working in seamless tandem that comes from surviving and thriving together in countless life or death scenarios.

Feo is not in the street, it’s apparent immediately. Steve has gone the wrong way. 

Well, win some, lose some. The _comuna_ is built into a slope, like so many _comunas_ are, and Steve makes for the top of it, determined to get a better view. Maybe he can cut Feo off while Javi herds him forward, though it’s unlikely. 

He reaches the top of the hill and whirls, shading his eyes against the sun as he glances over the rooftops, searching. 

Javier shouts in Spanish. Steve cranes his neck toward the sound. He’s close.

There.

A shot rings out. That’s nothing new - shots are always ringing out in Medellín. It’s practically how the _sicarios_ say hello. 

But this time, it’s different. This time, Javier staggers back like he’s been punched in the solar plexus, and Steve’s world converges into two undeniable facts - dread, and absolute certainty.

Javi’s been hit. 

Somehow, Steve has the sense of mind to radio for backup with medical, an instinct honed from years of beats in the shadier neighborhoods of Miami. He doesn’t bother listening for the garbled response, he’s just running, tearing through the streets of Medellín with only one thought replaying through his mind. 

He can’t see Javi anymore.

Steve shakes away the implications and focuses on what he can remember - where Javi had been standing, the direction of his voice. His lungs are burning, heart pounding painfully in his chest, but Steve’s totally unaware of that. It shouldn’t be possible, but he’s flying, feet hardly hitting the ground as he tears through the _comuna,_ making his way once again toward the rooftops.

His best friend’s life is on the line.

And isn’t that funny? If you’d have asked Steve an hour ago, he’d have laughed in your face at the idea that Javi was anything more than his work partner. Javi’s an asshole. A self-righteous, arrogant, hypocritical, sell-you-to-the-fucking-cartels-on-a-whim cuntstain of a human being. Yeah, Steve can admit that Javier Peña is a decent agent. He wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t. There’s also the fact that Javi knows all of the best dives in town, and that he’s always good for a drink after a long shift, and sure, maybe he’d stuck up for Steve that one time with Messina, but friends? Yeah, that’s a long shot.

Except now, it’s not.

The stairwell Steve’s been climbing ends abruptly. He’s standing on a three foot square platform, looking up at a ten foot wall.

Shit, shit, shit.

Javi is right there, just on the roof above him.

Steve doesn’t think, he just leaps, the tin edges slicing his palms as he scrambles for the ledge. He kicks his feet hard, banging his shins with enough force to bruise as he rolls gracelessly onto the roof. Later, when Steve tells Connie that it was a feat of athleticism that would put the best of his college buddies to shame, he’s not lying.

And there’s Javi. 

Steve drops to his knees beside the body. Javi’s lying crumpled on the ground, curled on his side in a fetal position that looks far more vulnerable than Steve is comfortable witnessing. 

“Javi?” Steve calls, shaking his partner hard as he hauls him over onto his back. “Shit.”

Javi doesn’t answer. The concrete beneath him is a pool of red blood. It’s smeared all over Javi’s pink shirt, an ominous, dark stain originating from somewhere near his shoulder. 

And it’s still pumping steadily from the wound. 

Steve catches a breath, reminds himself that this is a good thing. Dead people don’t bleed. 

Automatically, he presses one hand over the most saturated part of Javi’s shirt. Hold pressure. It’s basic first aid, but basic first aid is prioritized at the academy because it saves lives. Steve punches his palm into Javi’s shoulder for all he’s worth. 

But Javi’s still not moving, not responding. Carefully, Steve cups his free fingers gently over Javi’s mouth and nose. Soft, quick breaths pulse hot against his skin, and a tight bubble of tension bursts in Steve’s chest. 

Javi is breathing. Thank fuck, Javi is breathing.

Blood spurts through the cracks Steve’s fingers, warm and deep crimson, and Steve has a sudden, wild thought that it’s much more slippery than he’d have thought, more like motor oil than water. He’s seen blood in this quantity before, many, many times, but never this close, never pouring out onto his bare hands, never gushing in slick rivulets from the body of his partner and friend. 

Steve flashes back to that one sting gone horribly wrong in Miami, to being held at gunpoint in the doorway while Henderson bled out onto the dirty motel carpet. 

He shakes it away. Not this time. Never again.

He shifts his position, tilting Javi’s head to the opposite side so he won’t choke and exposing the wound so he has better access to it. He can’t see the edges, and hell, he’s definitely not looking, but the blood seems to be coming from the juncture of Javi’s neck and shoulder, just to the edge of the kevlar strap of his tac vest. 

Fuck.

An inch to right, and Javi would have walked away with a massive bruise, maybe a broken clavicle. An inch to the left, and it would have all been over.

“Of course it would be your shoulder, Javi,” Steve grouses. It it were an arm or a leg, he’d have already used his belt to make a tourniquet. But that’s not an option here, and by the way Javi’s breathing - fast, quick little pants that are quickly turning his lips blue, Steve wonders if there might be something wrong with Javi’s lung, too.

Fucking Christ. 

“God, get here already,” Steve mutters under his breath as he presses both palms into Javi’s chest. Shit, the bullet’s gone all the way through. Steve can feel the heat of Javier’s blood seeping into his jeans. 

‘All bleeding eventually stops,’ he remembers Connie saying after a terrible shift at Ryder. Her tone had been flippant and thoroughly blasé, cynical like the humor of all nurses who work trauma call is cynical. At the time, Steve had brushed it off as a one-off, a ruthless, humorless joke made out of frustration. 

With a slow dawn of horror, he suddenly understands exactly what Connie had meant. 

“Fuck,” Steve mutters desperately, pinning Javi’s body between his knee and his fists, locking his elbows and pressing both hands as hard as he’s able into the wound in a desperate attempt to staunch the bleeding. 

His wild thought of ‘where the hell are they going to land the chopper?’ is cut off as Javi shifts and groans.

Steve panics. Javi’s lost a lot of blood, far, far too much blood. It’s all over Steve, all over Javi, all over the concrete, and Steve has just now gotten it under control. 

Javi needs to be still, dammit. 

“Don’t you dare fucking move, Javi, you hear me?” Steve’s voice is brittle as he leans in close to Javi’s ear. 

And oh god, somehow, the situation is suddenly so much worse now that Javi isn’t completely out, now that Steve knows that in some capacity, Javi is aware of what’s happening to him. 

Fuck.

But Javi just huffs one shuddering breath, and then goes so completely still that Steve’s heart lurches in his chest. 

“And don’t you fucking die, either, you hear?” Steve shouts into his ear.

Really, that’s more important than anything. 

Javi grunts something in response, a word that Steve, in his frazzled state, doesn’t quite catch. Later, when he relives this day over and over again, Steve thinks it might have been “asshole.”

The ensuing silence is stifling. They lay there on that rooftop for an eternity, Javi sandwiched between Steve’s fists and his knee, Steve’s back and arms burning with tension. Javi’s breathing speeds and shallows. His entire face is ashen now. Little beats of sweat have broken out on his forehead. His blood is cooling, congealing dark between Steve’s fingers.

“Please, god, please.” Steve hasn’t prayed in years, but this is different. Important. He’s not asking for anything for himself. Not for Connie, even. 

He’s begging for Javi’s life.

In the distance, the blades of a chopper are beat, beat, beating against the wind.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry not sorry.


End file.
